Situation:

When tasked to provide a new feeder system for dental hygiene products our customer had a specific set of requirements.  The parts came in (2) variations that were oddly shaped with few features available to us to orient the part and even included a high-gloss finish.  It was our task to provide a feeding system to consistently orient and feed 15 pristine parts per minute.

Results:

Beginning with stainless steel, this vibratory feeder bowl was constructed with the parts’ finish in mind, which in this case was a high-gloss.  Major tooling features were attached with a low angle (or near horizontal) slope, to let vibration move the parts instead of gravity to minimize friction between the bowl and the parts.  Additionally, we selected a urethane bowl coating to preserve the gloss finish while the parts made their way to tooling features.  After adding (2) separate sets of interchangeable part selecting/orienting sections, the challenge was to move the parts out and away from the feeder all the while maintaining orientation and part finish.  A small section of directional bristle mat was selected to gently persuade the part into the inline feeder where it could safely move toward the next phase of production.  In 17 weeks, we delivered a custom parts feeding system that delivered 15 uniquely shaped and delicate parts per minute to our customer’s production line.